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Dog
Food – The Good, The Bad and The
Not so good. . .
 Hi!
My name is Barney, and I‘m a member
of the AZGRC Class of 2006 I’m a
cute boy and have golden fur, but I
don’t think I’m a golden retriever –
but someone thought I was darling
enough to save, thank goodness.
Have you ever bought your dog food
because you saw a great
advertisement about how good it was
for your pet and not even bothered
to look at the ingredients? We all
have.
For many years I didn’t pay any
attention to the ingredients in the
food I was eating. I’d go to Pet
Smart or PetCo with Mom and see a
food that I was familiar with
because of heavy advertising. I’d
go up to one of the brand names that
I knew and do a “I want this” bark
and Mom would throw it in the
basket. I didn’t realize at the
time that I wasn’t getting the most
nutritious food that I could have
and my future health and lifespan
might be affected.
In order to make myself healthy,
wealthy and wise (not too sure about
the wealthy part but that’s how the
saying goes so I had to include it)
I started doing research regarding
dog food ingredients and found out
some interesting facts. One thing I
discovered is that many of the
common kibble brands of well known
foods contained food fillers and
were made of lower grade products –
some of which potentially could
cause me to have health problems.
Now that’s not to say that all
fillers and low-grade ingredients
could or would cause harm, but the
potential may be there, so as a pet
owner you may want to be aware.
I found that there’s a whole lot of
information on the internet and
everyone seems to have an opinion
about what’s good and what’s not
good for dogs to eat. However,
there are a number of sites that
have information that seem to be
written by knowledgeable people, as
well as some premium dog food
manufacturers’ sites, that share the
same information about what is good
and healthy for your dog (and cat,
but the information in this article
is regarding dog food only), and
what food types (not brand names,
but listed ingredients) are bad, and
why. A number of these sites are
listed at the end of my “blarney”.
I learned that it’s a very good idea
to look beyond the advertising
literature and TV ads from companies
that market and sell dog food. When
you look at, and know about,
ingredients, it seems that for many
suppliers, “bottom line profit” is
the main ingredient. Words like
“healthy”, “premium”, “natural”, and
“high quality” don’t necessarily
mean that the kibble is using the
best or most nutritional ingredients
for your dog. There are also cancer
causing ingredients in some foods as
well as controversial ingredients
that could cause health problems.
I’ve written this to make dog
owners aware of some of these “good”
and “not so good” ingredients.
Since AZGRC is not in the business
of recommending any one particular
dog food over another, here are some
resources that you may find
interesting.
A great
resource for learning about dog food
is The Dog Food Project. The home
page is
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=main
Be sure to look at the headings on
the left side of the page. Two of
them are highlighted below.
Dog Food
Ingredients Articles
Reviews of Pet Food
A site that
actually does in depth reviews of
many dog foods is http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com
One good feature about this site is
that it mentions if a food has
controversial ingredients or
ingredients that may cause harm to
your pet. However, it rates a food
primarily by the meat content in it
(which is how it gives a 6 Star or 5
Star rating). The Dog Food Project
states the following regarding these
ratings:
A food of truly high quality, with
over 95% organic ingredients
(manufactured at an APHIS registered
plant with organic certification)
lumped into the same category as a
mediocre mass-market product,
based solely on its meat content and
the presence of certain grains,
taking no other characteristics into
consideration. That just doesn’t
make any sense whatsoever, since
ingredient quality can’t be changed,
but meat content can be tweaked
easily by simply enhancing the
overall diet by adding fresh or
canned meat.
Another site
lists a dog food rating system
http://members.petfinder.com/~CA469/files/DogFoodRatings.pdf
However, The
Dog Food Project gives some input as
to why this is not an accurate
system to rate the foods:
http://www.dogfoodproject.com/index.php?page=grading_kibble
The above article and listed
articles at the end are for
informational purposes only. AZGRC
makes no recommendations implied or
otherwise for any particular dog
food or type of dog food and makes
no suggestion to change existing
food being fed to rescued dogs.
This information is to make dog
owners more aware.
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